"Dunno, miss," answers Joe with a grave face. But as he dismounts to wheel his machine up the knoll, he stops short with a sudden smoothing out of all the perplexed lines from his dark brow. "Hi, dar!" he exclaims. "Look-a yer, Miss Corney!"
Cornelia does look, and so do all the rest. There is a perfect chorus of shrieks and laughter, a babel of voices, a torrent of questions.
"Oh, we travel, I assure you!" says Starrett. "We took a flying leap and came in ahead of you."
"How did it happen? When did you pass us?" These and countless other questions follow. Then all is explained, and at five o'clock the merry six are on the road again, rolling along in lively style.
So, in single file, with Joe in advance, and Starrett bringing up the rear, the club rides through the main street of Wareham, down the long slant to the bridge over the Wareham river. The evening mist hangs low along the stream; the bridge seems to stretch across the rushing tide and end abruptly in mid-air. The soft, grayish opaque cloud hides the farther shore from sight.
There are heads at doors and windows, and people on the street stop to gaze. At first the girls feel a little abashed at so much attention. But nobody is discourteous; Joe rides steadily on, and there is nothing to do but to follow.
"I suppose we do look queer to them," says Mattie Hyde.
"Oh, well, you are missionaries, you know," says Starrett assuringly. "Perhaps your club may be the means of introducing tricycles into many of the places we shall pass through."
"That's one of our objects, of course," observes Charley.
"If girls and women knew what comfort one can take with a tricycle, half the battle would be won," says Arno Cummings timidly.
[Illustration: "THE BUSHES WHIZ PAST,--TREES, STONES, FENCES FLIT BY LIKE PHANTOMS."]
"It isn't altogether that, Arno," says Charley, who, as the originator of the club, has her advanced theories to support. "A good many would like to, but don't really dare. You know that Shakspere says 'Conscience doth make cowards of us all.' I think that custom makes us cowards, too."
"Custom will be on our side, though, by and by," declares Mattie Hyde. "Doctor Sawyer told Mamma the other day that he would prescribe the tricycle rather than medicine for many of his patients. He said that the machines are much used in England, and that they are gaining ground in this country, though not so rapidly as he could wish."